Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday July 20, 2009 @10:55AM
from the meat-is-murder dept.

Back in January we covered the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot, or EATR. The EATR gets its energy by "engaging in biologically-inspired, organism-like energy-harvesting behavior which is the equivalent of eating. It can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment ..." So many news outlets picked up the story and ran it with titles alluding to the robot "eating flesh" or even "eating corpses" that a company spokesperson put out a press release saying, "This robot is strictly vegetarian." The statement says in part, "RTI's patent pending robotic system will be able to find, ingest and extract energy from biomass in the environment. Despite the far-reaching reports that this includes 'human bodies,' the public can be assured that the engine Cyclone has developed to power the EATR runs on fuel no scarier than twigs, grass clippings and wood chips — small, plant-based items for which RTI's robotic technology is designed to forage. Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI."

I can certainly see the appeal here.. Surely our flesh-eating robot overlords would have a vested interest in making sure that we are all healthy and nutritious. Disease and famine would become a thing of the past! Not to mention the forced breeding programs!

I admit, it was me. It was all a joke, you know... In hindsight, it might not have been wise to confront the slashdot crowd with the vision of a forced breeding program, but honestly, I didn't realize what I had done until they started to mod me "Insightful".

So here you have it, you now know the truth. I'm sorry you have to live your life as cattle.

I am now presented with the difficult problem of inventing a punctuation symbol that is interpreted to mean "spoken in the voice of a flesh-eating robotic overlord, sounding not at all apologetic". And I have to find one that SlashCode doesn't mangle. Let's use "%#", just to be utterly arbitrary.

Not to mention the forced breeding programs!

%#BEND OVER, FOODSTUFF. I NEED TO REFILL MY TURKEY BASTER. Oh, you need another hole for semen extraction. And you yourself aren't good enough. Guards, take this runt off

Those laws only apply to the Human Species.. not to our new robot overlord species. The creators are assuming they'll always be in control of what the robots choose to eat... they made a movie about that I think? heck we can't even control police dogs and they're "man's best friend". Forget robots being as smart as people.. when they get as smart as dogs we'll start having problems.

correction:It also doesn't say who exactly is LEFT to ENFORCE the conventions if SOMETHING EATS them.

I really don't understand this trashing of the Geneva Conventions that started under Bush/Cheney. The rationale seems to be that "bad guys" are going to do stuff anyways, so we might as well be one of them. (If you can restate your rationale better, please do so). But the fact is the Geneva Conventions have helped a lot of prisoners over the years. Moreover, we have gained nothing by violating them. Abu-Ghraib and Gitmo have created a lot of global cynicism that has impaired our cause far more than whatever we got out of humiliating and torturing people.

The Geneva conventions apply to uniformed soldiers fighting in declared wars between states. They specifically exclude "irregular" combatants who dress as civilians or are not acting on behalf of a state.

An argument can be made in favor of extending the protections of the Geneva conventions to cover "irregular" forces, but an argument could be made against it as well.

The Geneva conventions apply to uniformed soldiers fighting in declared wars between states. They specifically exclude "irregular" combatants who dress as civilians or are not acting on behalf of a state.

Such as, say, people fighting on behalf of fellow citizens, against what they deem to be an oppressive power which attempts to dictate their actions from afar?

So obviously there's no direct parallel for the American Revolution today, but my point is that standards of war change -- and if we continue to believe that only "proper" war combatants should be protected, we're betraying principles which most of us believe to be more important than any government.

OK, but there's idealism, and then there's the actual treaty that many nations agreed to. Agreed to not because of morality, but because eachthought it would server their self interest to do so. That treaty mostly protects uniformed soldiers under government command, for good historical reasons. And the only punishment for not complying with the treaty is that it will no longer protect your side, so extending its protections to those who don't comply with it destroys the very valuable protections it does offer.

Perhaps a new treaty would be better, and perhaps you could get the world powers to sign tht treaty, and perhaps monkeys will fly out of my butt and serve as moderators for the process.

But that's all the more reason to treat the other side's forces properly. If both sides are torturing prisoners, committing attrocities on its prisoners, leaving wounded soldiers untended, etc, then neither side will give up because it would be better to fight to the death than to fall into enemy hands. If one side is kind to its prisoners, then the enemy is more likely to surrender. Better lying in a hospital bed with clean sheets and proper food, than to be tied to a post and used as a knife throwing t

That's true, of course. No doubt that's wht we give Gitmo prisoners free copies of the Koran and Harry Potter books, and otherwise treat them better than the average American POW has been treated by our enemies (I believe it's the case that more media personalities have had themselves waterboarded "to see how bad it really is" than America has waterboarded enemy combatants). However, you still want to leave a gap between how you treat prisoners of opponents who don't follow the treaty, and those who do, s

So obviously there's no direct parallel for the American Revolution today, but my point is that standards of war change -- and if we continue to believe that only "proper" war combatants should be protected, we're betraying principles which most of us believe to be more important than any government.

On the other hand, the founding fathers were very clear that they were now a new state. Of course, the goal is to know who to hold accountable for following the rules of the Geneva Convention.

This doesn't mean we should violate our common sense of human decency, but we are not held accountable to the letter of the Geneva Convention because it only works if both parties follow the rules.

Irregular combatants, terrorists and random extremist militias should be protected, just not by the Geneva conventions.I'm struggling to come up with a car analogy here, but basically trying to shoe-horn them into a law/treaty that wasn't created with them in mind makes little sense when there are already other laws which would protect them in this country.As far as what happens outside of the country, I think the ballot box is the best, maybe only, answer to that.

General principles are great, and I'm in favor of them. However, that is not the same thing as the obligations spelled out in a treaty. It's like saying that the speed limit in Maryland has something to do with driving in England.

And it should be noted both that the Continental army was in fact uniformed, and fought well before the Geneva conventions were written.

So obviously there's no direct parallel for the American Revolution today, but my point is that standards of war change -- and if we continue to believe that only "proper" war combatants should be protected, we're betraying principles which most of us believe to be more important than any government.

But this principle hasn't changed. In the formulation of the Geneva Conventions they gave much thought to the place of partisans or militias, who might not be uniformed. If they are under the common command of

The Geneva conventions apply to uniformed soldiers fighting in declared wars between states. They specifically exclude "irregular" combatants who dress as civilians or are not acting on behalf of a state.

Yeah, but all the countries that could fight a declared war are pretty much allied.

I don't foresee the US, UK, Russian, and China duking it out any time soon; do you?

The Geneva conventions apply to uniformed soldiers fighting in declared wars between states. They specifically exclude "irregular" combatants who dress as civilians or are not acting on behalf of a state.

Irregular combatants dessing as civilians were, among western nations, usually spies. And enemy spies in your country were treated as criminals and tried according to the laws of your land, which were usually quite severe when it came to spying, but they still had the same rights that any criminal has. A fair trial, for example.

They problem with the Gitmo prisoners is that they were not only denied rights as PoWs, but also rights as criminals or even human beings. Torture is not just forbidden by the Geneva

The Bush administration seemed to be the only ones interested in what the Geneva Conventions actually say. The distinction of lawful and unlawful enemy combatants is made in article 4, part 1 of the third Geneva Convention, which defines who qualifies for the protections described in the convention. The interpretation of this by the Bush administration was in no way novel. It is no different from the interpretation of the International Red Cross. I honestly can't understand the rationale of those who sug

I retract my statement in the parent post that there is ambiguity where a trial of a prisoner of war should take place, insofar as that prisoner of war is a lawful enemy combatant, and protected by the Geneva Convention. I was just reading through it and was shocked to find this (emphasis added):

Article 84.

A prisoner of war shall be tried only by a military court, unless the existing laws of the Detaining Power expressly permit the civil courts to try a member of the armed forces of the Detaining Power i

That's kind of a wussy ass war crime. What does it matter what happens to the dead, they're dead. People should be more concerned about the living.

Uhh... that's the whole point. Few are very concerned about whether a robot cuts up a body on a battlefield, or whether a soldier does it on his way past to check his gun hasn't jammed, or because he didn't like the expression on the dead guy's face.

The point is that, if people start creating robots like this, it will have a living, evolving impact on our society, and everyone in it. It's more a concern about humans becoming cannibals-by-proxy, than about robots being uncivilised.

What's the difference between having a robot eat the guy, and leaving the guy to be eaten by the crows, coyotes, vultures, or whatever other detrivores [wikipedia.org] are common place wherever you are.

What's the difference between having a robot eat the guy, and leaving the guy to be eaten by the crows, coyotes, vultures, or whatever other detrivores are common place wherever you are.

Go read some philosophy and/or spirituality if you really want an answer to that (or just debate on it). It's WAY out of scope for this discussion, and frankly, it's something I expect civilised people to have already studied somewhat.

there is simply not enough data in my statement to precisely categorize what I said

Except that you ended your sentence with a full stop which marked your sentence complete...

I will expand on it if it helps you: I do not care what happens to dead bodies, for they are only containers for consciousness.

...making this an entirely different statement. It might well be that it's entirely different only because your initial statement was lazily incomplete, but that's a self-representation issue on your part.

No it's not. Maybe, we should collect our enemy's dead, and hire dr. death to plasticize them for display in a "fallen enemies" museum? (http://images.google.com/images?q=dr.%20death%20body%20art&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi) Besides, who the hell wants to sleep next to the guy that cuts the ears off of the people he kills?

I know you're being tongue in cheek here, but seriously, the Geneva Convention gives rules of civilized warfare. If you abide by the rules, you recieve the protections of those rules.

"Enemy combatants" are what happens when one side in a conflict (Guerilla fighters usually) - decide they're going to ignore the rules of war. By deciding this, they forfeit any protections under the Geneva Convention.

Yes it does:"Art 18. After each engagement, Parties to the conflict shall, without delay, take all possible measures to search for and collect the shipwrecked, wounded and sick, to protect them against pillage and ill-treatment, to ensure their adequate care, and to search for the dead and prevent their being despoiled."

I like the idea. Also... maybe the robot could stop in front of the body, play a dirge to give it a proper funeral, and then start dissecrting it into bits small enough to fit into its energ... portable cremation unit!

No disrepect of the dead at all, each and every one gets an honorable robotic funeral, and a proper cremation.

course, I doubt it would actually be a great power source, the freshly dead still have a lot of water in them and, I would think, would need to be dessicated well. Plant matter has the

What is exactly your point?Are you against a technology because it COULD (your emphasis) be used for evil?What exactly do you propose, then? Should research on mobile biomass-based energy converters be banned, existing knowledge be censored, be denied federal funds, or what?

Whatever your proposal is, how would it apply to other technologies that can be used for enormous evil? Nuclear energy? High energy physics? Rocket propulsion? Genetic engineering? Nanotechnology?All of the previous technologies could be

Desecrating the dead may be a crime, but aren't humans the only ones who can be help responsible for war crimes? If I carpet bomb an enemy military installation, can I be held responsible for a war crime if that installation had any dead bodies that get vaporized? Similarly, if I set loose this robot in a war one and program it to eat the dead (maybe only dead enemies), would I be held responsible for the actions of the robot? As someone above asked, who enforces this anyway? Can't they just make 'killing people' and 'destroying stuff' war crimes?

Yes. Individuals have been held accountable for war crimes committed under their orders, e.g. Goring, Kaltenbrunner, Keitel. The last is particularly informative since he was a field marshal executed primarily for having ordered the execution of captured soldiers, rather than for participation in the Holocaust. You might be able to get away with writing the program for such a robot, but using one in war, or ordering one to be used in war, would be a crime.

As someone above asked, who enforces this anyway? Can't they just make 'killing people' and 'destroying stuff' war crimes?

This thing SHOULD eat corpses. You know how much land is wasted in cemeteries and such? And how much cash in embalming and other funereal preparations? This could have saved thousands of acres and millions of dollars. Oh well, there's still a chance Japan will come through for it.

Actually, it is a old practice to allow people to be buried, and then after a suitable time, the bones are dug up and put in a bone house or something like that. It is a relatively recent thing for people to be preserved and stuck in airtight caskets. Chances are that the practices will change again if land ever became an issue. Not even most religions require any thing like permanent burial in plots forever and ever, so it's pretty much a practice for the benefit of the living, as opposed to the dead.

Part of it is the Christian belief regarding the Rapture. All those buried are supposed to rise up and the sea give up her dead. I guess the people whose bodies have rotted away (or worse - whose bodies were burned or otherwise destroyed after, or as a cause of death) are just SOL, but the belief still stands in the issue.

When I HAVE asked for an answer on the destroyed body issue most have responded that in their minds if you body was unusable then you'd get a new one but that we still should try our bes

Part of it is the Christian belief regarding the Rapture. All those buried are supposed to rise up and the sea give up her dead. I guess the people whose bodies have rotted away (or worse - whose bodies were burned or otherwise destroyed after, or as a cause of death) are just SOL, but the belief still stands in the issue.

I don't think you know what you're talking about. Christianity doesn't have any specific prohibition on cremation (though some denominations might), but most Catholic & protestant denominations allow it. Cremation is forbidden under Islam. Please take a little time to learn these things before you just rattle something off, hoping to get religion bashing mod points.

I don't think you know what you're talking about. Christianity doesn't have any specific prohibition on cremation (though some denominations might), but most Catholic & protestant denominations allow it. Cremation is forbidden under Islam. Please take a little time to learn these things before you just rattle something off, hoping to get religion bashing mod points.

Buddy I spent the first 18 years of my life attending a very strict Southern Baptist congregation. I know very well that they were EXTREMELY against cremation (amongst other things that some more mainstream Christians allowed - it was preached in my church that it was a sin to read from any Biblical translation other than the KJV). Nice trying though.

You're right about funeral expenses being the will of the market, though how anyone was ever convinced your loved ones will hate you if you're not planted in a $10,000 box baffles me.

As for the cemeteries not being on desirable land, I'd have to see surveyor's reports to say for sure, since there's some massive ones in my city right next to major roads. I can't imagine that someone wouldn't want to throw a couple businesses up next to a major thoroughfare.

Technically, couldn't you shove a corpse in with the fuel of a steam engine and burn it? Does that make old-timey trains monstrous death-machines?

Hell, for that matter, what are "fossil fuels" but the corpses of plants and animals, anyway?

This thing would be scary if it actively hunted corpses not because of its ability to digest them, but rather its intent and design to do so. That you might could shove a body part into a robot out collecting twigs and grass clippings isn't really the designers' fault.

I always knew that I lived in an amazing time. I always knew that incredible things would be developed while I was alive. However, I expected these to be things like a reliable cure for cancer, widely available flying cars, and the reduction of disease and hunger in exotic locales where we could benefit from cheap, well-fed labor.

Never did I imagine that we would instead focus on robots that do not, but theoretically could, eat people as fuel.